The Check for Orphaned Names/Families item on the Utilities Menu scans your data files to see if there are any names without a family connection, or any families with no individual names attached to them.
Each individual must be attached to a family, and each family must have at least one individual!
As this dialog is called up, CMD will scan both individuals and families to see if there are any orphans and will be displayed on the dialog:
The left column of the dialog lists any names who are not connected to a family. This rarely happens in the normal course of using CMD, but it does on occasion. If you find names on this list, you should decide if the names are additional to names already in CMD, or if they need to be connected to a family. You can connect them to a family using the Reassign function, or you can delete it.
Deleting Orphaned Names/Families
There are two ways to delete orphaned names or families. First, you may click directly on a name or family to be deleted in the list box showing the orphaned names or families and then clicking the Delete Selected Name/Family button.
Or, you can go to Enter/Modify/Delete Names where you can temporarily reassign the name to a valid family, then delete the name from the family using the normal deletion process. The latter process might be best in those cases where you have an orphaned name in addition to a person by the same name in a family. If you reassign the orphaned name to the family to which they would normally belong, you can choose between the names to see which one you wish to delete.
Printing
To print a list of either orphaned names or families with no individuals, click the Print List button above the respective list of names.